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New teachers who have wanted to help the city address its severe shortage of science teachers can now be considered for jobs.

Until today, the teachers had been shut out of the system because of a hiring freeze that has limited principals to teachers already working in the city. 

Principals are still limited to current teachers when they hire biology teachers, according to Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte. In March, there were 35 biology teachers in the “excess pool,” for teachers already on the system’s payroll, but not hired at a school. The hiring restrictions, in place since early May, were meant to make it more likely for principals to hire teachers in the pool, including those whose positions were lost to budget cuts this spring. The department still has not released information about how many teaching positions were cut this spring.

Last week, the city gave the okay to new teachers whose licenses enable them to teach in District 75, which serves the system’s most disabled students. About 70 Teaching Fellows were affected by that change.

I Teach NYC, the city’s program to attract new teachers, posted about today’s change on Twitter just after 5:30 p.m.

A week after principals were required to submit their budgets for next year, the city still doesn’t have an answer to the question of how many teachers are losing their positions because of budget cuts.

That question is essential for the counterintuitive reason that positions cut at schools actually don’t save the system any money. If a principal can’t pay for a teacher, the teacher goes into a pool of “excessed” teachers whose salaries are paid by the department. That pool already contains more than 1,700 people and has been criticized as a burden on the city’s budget. If the size of the pool swells because of the budget cuts, the department could end up shouldering thousands of teachers’ salaries — all while the teachers aren’t officially on a school’s staff.

Department of Education staff are still crunching the budget numbers, officials say. The department’s chief operating officer, Photeine Anagnastopoulos, told me on Tuesday that the excess situation was shaping up to be “not as bad” as she and others had anticipated, particularly considering that principals haven’t yet launched the bulk of their hiring for the fall.

But a source familiar with the budget process says the numbers have been delayed because the department is “scrambling” to check principals’ math about whether they need to cut positions. Staff at the department’s service centers are “going over budgets in high-excess schools trying to negotiate fewer excesses,” the source said. (more…)

For those unfamiliar with the bureaucratic behemoth that is the New York City Department of Education, the term “excessed” is somewhat strange.  Most spell check software (including this one) doesn’t even recognize it as a word.  But, indeed it is. I know because I looked it up two weeks ago, just for kicks.

There it is, at the bottom.  Number seven.  It’s a verb (used with object) that means:

And no, I didn’t look it up just for fun. I guess semi-morbid curiosity would be more accurate.

It was just over two weeks ago when I was in the classroom and an announcement was made calling three teachers and myself to the principal’s office for a brief meeting after school. (more…)